I am currently a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine in the UK, having written for Wired UK since its launch in 2009, and speak regularly on the impact of developing technologies on consumer behaviors at Wired Consulting events and elsewhere.
In my copious free time, I write for Wired, GQ and elsewhere on the emerging digital culture, from gaming giants to adventurous startups, and provide creative insight for technology companies. In previous lives, I managed corporate communications for a large software company, and was a senior creative at a Hoxton agency. But then again, who wasn't?
I'm also on Twitter and Google Plus. Send tips and/or contacts to danielATdanielnyegriffiths.org

And at that point, when you realised you had all of these people talking about you, tweeting about you, posting to blogs about you – how did it feel?

Well, at first I couldn’t believe how fast it was spreading, and then, as the emails started coming in, that’s when I realised …

Basically, what Mike did is this: If you were in a bar, drinking and hanging out with a bunch of people, and in that group of people was one guy that you didn’t know was a mixed martial arts champion. He knows he can kick the **** out of anyone in that bar, and you happen to pick a fight with him. He doesn’t tell you what he is, you take a swing at him and the next thing you know you have a broken jaw and you’re on the way to the hospital.

So, you felt that the game suddenly changed. I guess that there was a fairly swift reaction from N-Control. How did that happen?

The next day everyone was talking about it. At first it was something like “Any press is good press, and bad press can be spun into good press”. And then they realised how much actual juice this guy had.

I was getting 17-18,000 emails, spam, threats to my family, intrusions on my personal life and a lot of stress and aggravation. These kids are ruthless on the Internet.

Ultimately, they were upset. I’m no longer working for N-Control in any capacity.

One thing that I do want to say is the N-Control doesn’t deserve what happened to them because of what happened to me. David Kotkin is an incredible guy. He’s a schoolteacher that took a year off to build his company, and try to make this thing a success. (…) His company doesn’t deserve any of the backlash or this trouble.

We’re not talking right now.

[30/12/2011 - From Chiullan's Reddit thread, in the context of Christoforo citing David Kotkin as a corroborating source: "David does not have Paul's back for any reason on any subject."]

But I made $20,000 in commission last month. I sold 10,000 units. I had the potential to make $200,000 this year, and now I don’t have a position with the company any more. If things blow over and I get a position back in the company…. I hope that I would, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do represent some other products, [N-Control]‘s not my only client.

[30/11/2011 - This conversation took place after N-Control's epic press release, but apparently before Christoforo had read it. In the press release, Chiullan opined that there was "not a bus big enough for [him] to throw Paul Christoforo under”. At this point, I think I can say without fear of correction that there is no chance of N-Control re-employing Christoforo in the foreseeable future. Sales numbers are unconfirmed, but should of course be treated with caution until ratified by a reputable third party.]

There have been a lot of things going on in the last hours. How do you think you’ve managed it? In particular, you’ve moved your Twitter account a couple of times, for example. How is it going, in terms of your personal brand?

I mean, I’m all right. There’s a lot of bad stuff on me right now, but today was a pretty good day. MSNBC put a real favourable piece up on me, there are a couple of radio interviews that I’m going to do, Spike TV’s going to come to my house on Monday to shoot a piece on me.

It’s good to be able to tell my story, because ultimately I’m not a bad guy. I made a mistake, but I’m sure this happens 150,000 times a day. (…) I talked to four or five thousand people before I talked to this kid. None of them went viral. Before Sunday my reputation was impeccable – it was as clean as the most expensive diamond. Now it’s just trash, and that bothers me.

[30/12/2011 - It is common knowledge at this point that other examples of poor customer service by Christoforo had been placed on the Web - including, in fact, in the comments to my previous post. Explaining why Kotkin had not previously acted on complaints, Chiullan said on Reddit:

Just because they were online doesn't mean that David [Kotkin] saw them or knew about them. He doesn’t pay attention to the same things that people like you or I do for the same reason that you and your parents don’t like the same TV shows necessarily: different consumption styles for different audiences.

This seems to support my contention that the wild card here is the involvement of Mike Krahulik, and Christoforo’s decision to fight first with Customer Dave and then Krahulik when he became involved. The existence of these previous complaints is seen by some as proof that Christoforo could not possibly believe that he had a spotless reputation. I would respectfully disagree, and note that far more surprising beliefs have been expressed, apparently sincerely. Not even the CEO of the company, apparently, can conclusively be said to be aware of these complaints.]

There’s nothing I can do about it, because of what he [Mike Krahulik] did. I’ve spoken to an attorney: I don’t know if I’m going to pursue that avenue – of defamation of character, slander, harassment, spam (…) He knew he was going to KO me. I didn’t get any warning, I just got KOed.

[30/12/2011 - a note: the value of these interviews in the longer run to his brand is open to question. My original draft suggested that, ultimately, Christophoro might find it more profitable to change his surname than to try to trade on his notoriety, since unless he can trademark "I wwebsite as on the Internet" - which he cannot - he has no product to sell except his own expertise. Nothing that has happened since has changed that first instinct.

There has been no further news of possible legal action. For my thoughts on the general topic of attorneys, see here - "If you take that lawyer out of its holster, you'd better be ready to use it".]

So, in more general terms, what’s your plan? What now?

I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, you know? I’ve got buyers all over the world who will buy whatever I sell them. I work with a lot of companies in the UK, Italy, France, Japan, Australia, Canada, the US, Mexico, South America – I have buyers all over the place. And my buyers are going to buy from me. I’ve got a little bit of backlash, but ultimately I think there will be a way to flip this around into something more positive.

[30/11/2011 - Not really an update, but an aside: it's interesting to see the same speech rhythms here as in the email exchange with Mike Krahulik - the list of countries (and later the list of gaming technologies) follows the same pattern as the list of games conferences:

and so on. Despite the change of message and tone, the relating of markets opened and gamer gear owned uses the same rhetorical device as the accounting of friends in high places and shows attended.]

And, you know, if the product’s selling and the product’s hot people are going to buy it no matter what. It doesn’t matter what I say, what the Internet says, what 4,000 people say. Ultimately, the population of the world is in the billions, and products are going to sell. And that’s what I’m going to keep doing. There’s no reason for me not to. I love my job.

I’m a little bit sad, because I’m a techie. I game five hours a night. On my laptop, my iPad, my PlayStation, my Xbox, my [PlayStation] Move, my 3DTV. I’m a geek, and these are my people. These are the people I hang out with, and affiliate myself with. (…) I don’t want them to be mad over something that’s been taken totally out of context, and wasn’t as bad as everyone says it was.

If you had a chance to talk to everybody – from Dave the customer to Mike Krahulik to all the people who’ve been reading about you, talking about you, leaving messages – is there something you’d say to them?

I’m very sorry, and I’m not the person that you may have read in the emails that I sent. You can’t judge a person by what they write – it’s the same thing as if you get a text (…) meant to be a joke, and you take it a certain way because you can’t read emotions with words. It’s not the same as a voice, when I can apologise to them and say how much they mean to me, and how much the community means to me, and how much I love gaming and everything they are about. That’s all I can really do: apologise, and say that the situation will never happen again. I probably wouldn’t do customer service again (…) but I’ll bite my tongue and not get aggravated.

More than anything, just an apology. To ask for forgiveness, and just … be humble.

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“I don’t want them to be mad over something that’s been taken totally out of context, and wasn’t as bad as everyone says it was.”

“Ill put my marketing team on a smear campaign of you and your site and your emails”

Did I take your threat of Mike (Gabe) and the Penny Arcade site itself “out of context”?

No.. not really. You whine that Mike was a bully to you now, but before you knew who he was you threatened to attempt to put him out of business in your e-mails to him.

And now you’ve got “context” by which threatening someone’s livelihood is acceptable?

Ok Paul.. show that “context”. Feel free to actually quote and show the e-mail chains so we can see the full “context” instead of your impression of what the e-mails were like… actually give the context.

Mike saw you being an ass, and decided you weren’t welcOme at his party… you respond with “I’ll put you out of business” and you’re the victim of bullying Paul?

Sell that to someone else; you’re nowhere near a good enough salesman for me to buy that pile of excrement.

Mike did warn him who he was, but Paul did not believe him. He assumed it was just some random Internet person who was laying, because that is the type of person that Paul is, a liar. He is also not a gamer or a geek, or he would know that bad press on the Internet cannot be spun into good press. The internet is too permanent. The email exchange speaks for itself, and it will always be out there to prove him wrong. Dave was also not the only customer; two other people have posted similar exchanges with Paul. We have the former PR Company on record say they warned something like this would happen when N-Control brought him on board. The media really needs to take Paul to bat and challenge him on his discrepancies.

I wish the writer had challenged him on his bald faced lies. He did not have a great reputation. He had no reputation. Most of the people he name-dropped in the industry had never heard of him and the ones that did literally had only received an email about N-Change in the last two months.

It is disgusting that he is trying to play the victim when he was the one that for no sensible reason decided to bully and deride a PAYING CUSTOMER. A customer who responded that he was forwarding the exchange to game site and that Paul then berated him and then Paul is surprised when one of those gaming blogs is peeved that he is using his con to degrade the customer “See you at CES , E3 , Pax East ….? Oh wait you have to ask mom and pa dukes your not an industry professional and you have no money on snap you just got told.” The only thing he seems to think he did wrong was not knowing who Mike was and not sucking up to him and he did try to do that failing to realize that Mike’s issue with him like most sane people that read the exchange was with his unprofessional behavior with the customer.

I don’t know what kind of sales he is in and I hate to wish someone ill but I really really hope that his clients choose to work with another salesperson. Also the fact that he still think he will get his job back with N-Change speaks of either delusional thinking on his part or some back story that N-Change is now denying.

Also I would love to know what industry professional sneaks into an event through the loading dock? Even interns just share badges if they want to get on the floor.

I strongly encourage anyone who reads this article to carefully read what Paul wrote to the customer and to Mike from Penny Arcade, because you will clearly see that the things he claims were said to him, were not said at all. Everything is down in plain text to be read, and it should be clear to anyone who reads over his comments that nearly everything he claims in this interview is false.

Futhermore, his claims of just “having a bad day” are rather easy to disprove as well, considering the email exchange took place over the course of nearly 10 days, and there is another (VERY similar) email record here (natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service) that shows him acting in exactly the same manner he used with “Customer Dave” and Mike from PA.

Thanks for this – I think you make good points, and have looked harder at clarifying some of these issues and putting more of the context directly into this post.

One thing, though – if you look at the email exchange, the responses to Dave are curt but not actually aggressive up to the 20th, and then when it resumes on the 26th the exchange goes into overdrive. This is also when Mike Krahulik gets involved. So, from Christoforo’s point of view, that’s the one bad day – around 12 hours between about 10am and 10pm on Boxing Day, during which the damage is done.

Whereas Customer Dave would probably argue that the previous days were also bad days for _him_, because he wasn’t getting his product or the information he needed, i.e. a reliable delivery date. So, it’s not so much a matter of objective proof as subjective experience.

Again Daniel if you had done due diligence as an reporter you would have easily found other instance with the SAME behavior that happened more than 6 months before, so the “one bad day” excuse doesn’t hold up unless his bad day is actually six months. It’s not a matter of subjective experience but basic knowledge of time such a the difference between a day, a week and months.

For the record, I became aware of these previous issues at around the same time, I imagine, that you became aware of them. This and other uncovered information informed both the writing of this piece and the writing of the previous piece, which was written and published on the 28 December – http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2011/12/28/games-pr-wild-west/ as it became available through public and private channels. If it’s on the Examiner timeline that was linked in this piece, it is pretty clearly known information.

What I have reported, with due diligence, is what Christoforo _said_. The bad day, in his account, was clearly the 26 December. He is justifying his behaviour first to Customer Dave and then to Mike Krahulik on that one day, in a series of emails between the morning (threatening to block Dave from cancelling and reordering the controllers) and late evening (threatening Penny Arcade with a smear campaign). I think any reasonably sophisticated member of the phylum Chordata should be able to decide for themselves whether this is an adequate justification, and make their own judgements.

Whether he had previously exchanged emails with Customer Dave, which he had (they were terse and not very informative, but not actively insulting) is not relevant to this justification. Nor, for that matter, are previous examples of poor customer service – they are certainly demonstrations of poor customer service and poor impulse control, but I think, again, that a capable reader would already understand that these can be found aplenty in Christoforo’s current behaviour.

The difference this time – and what makes this situation interesting and unusual, rather than just another clash leading to a complaint left largely unread until this incident – is that he exhibited these characteristic to somebody with the power immediately to bring Nemesis down in response to Christoforo’s hubris.

From Christoforo’s perspective, the bad day is the day he went up against Mike Krahulik. That is clearly what he is talking about, and the behaviour he is seeking to justify.

Now, if you would like to declare a direct interest, I would be happy to take this into account. If you would like to ask Moisés Chiullan of N-Control to comment on my coverage, I believe he has a thread going on Reddit, or can be contacted by Twitter or email.

However, I am pleased to confirm that I was fully aware of every datum you have so far presented either when or before they became public knowledge.

I was in contact with people directly involved on both sides, but I also read the links in my own article. This does not affect for one moment the factual record of what Christoforo said, or the logical interpretation of what he meant.

I think that at the heart of your unhappiness is that I did not confront Christoforo every time he made a contentious or falsifiable statement, leading to a brief but morally satisfying conversation.

That’s also fine. My objective was to elicit statements relevant to the current situation which other parties involved would be able to comment on and respond to, while adhering to the journalistic standards and practices required by Forbes.com.

The objectivity which you see as a bug is, from this perspective, a feature, although clearly not one you are shopping for. However, I believe that it is not one which is credibly indicative of a failure in journalistic practice.

I respect your intent to remain objective and avoiding ‘taking sides’. As I understand the situation, you had quite thoroughly researched the background of this incident prior to the interview, so you were aware of several instances where Mr Christoforo’s statements did not align with previously established facts. How would it have been a failure of journalistic practice to have asked how he believed his statements stood alongside these facts?

At the point that an interview is carried out, no journalist is truly objective. Their selection and phrasing of questions often has a large bearing on the direction and tone that an interview will take. Obviously it is important to keep the subject onside, particularly one as apparently volitile as Mr Christoforo, unless it is to be reported that the subject terminated the interview after five minutes.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that the questions that your readers are wanting answered are why Mr Christoforo seems sorry for being caught but not truly sorry for having insulted his customer(s) in the first place and why he insists on spinning half-truths and falserhoods even after being caught out. Based on the quality of your work, you seem to be a reporter of reasonable skill. Surely it would have been possible for you to get Mr Christoforo onside and then discuss these issues in a way that did not seem combative or as if he had walked into an ambush. This is not a matter of bias, simply playing the devil’s advocate.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that the questions that your readers are wanting answered are why Mr Christoforo seems sorry for being caught but not truly sorry for having insulted his customer(s) in the first place and why he insists on spinning half-truths and falserhoods even after being caught out.

It’s possible, in that case, that I simply failed accurately to note the questions that my readers wanted answered – in particular regular readers of Forbes.com, rather than new readers, who are of course very welcome and encouraged to enjoy the site. I rather assumed that the answers to both of those questions were pretty obvious. In fact, my journalistic instincts (and thanks for the kind words there – I certainly aspire to be reasonably skilled!) suggest that the moment the questions are phrased that way, it’s pretty clear what the questioner believes the answers are. Whereas I think the Forbes-relevant questions here are about how the crisis is created and managed by the various players – rather than whether or not Paul Christoforo is a stand-up guy – an opinion on which question can be found on a whole range of sites at present. It was more interesting to watch the crisis management in action than to ask meta-questions about it.

But, of course, your mileage may vary; there are no right answers, really. If you’d like to see an interview that asks the stand-up-guy questions, there’s one here.

Given a chance to be contrite, he continues to equivocate, drop names and make grandiose claims about his success. He just can’t resist bragging about his alleged contacts and demand for his services. Is this global thirst for his unique brand of representation like the 125 mythic employees he claimed to have?

Then he adds icing to the cake by trying to play the victim. He claims to have spoken with an attorney? Is he going to sue himself? All the vitriol he’s received was prompted by comments he himself made. Krahulik didn’t ask anyone to do anything in response to Christoforo’s emails. He just promised to take action within the scope of his power as the organizer of PAX. It may have been a rash decision or even “unprofessional”, but unlike Chrtistoforo, Krahulik doesn’t claim make public relations his trade.

Christoforo could have been humble and apologized without reservation. In time he might have been forgotten. Instead he’s going to be an all time joke because he keep pouring gasoline on himself. He has no one to blame but himself. He made the pyre, now he should shut his mouth and burn with it.